ORCID = Researcher and Contributor ID and is a type of author identifier. ORCID gives you a way to reliably and unambiguously connect your name(s) with your work throughout your career, including your papers, data, biographical information, etc.
This can be helpful in a number of ways. ORCID:
- Provides a means to distinguish between you and other authors with identical or similar names.
- Links together all of your works even if you have used different names over the course of your career or had multiple institutional affiliations.
- Makes it easy for others (grant funders, other researchers etc.) to find your research output.
- Ensures that your work is clearly attributed to you.
ORCID can...
- Alleviate mistaken identity
- Reduce/eliminate the need for a researcher disambiguation process
- Enable machine-to-machine updates for researcher reporting
- Maintain researcher connections despite name/affiliation changes
- Facilitate community collaboration across similar institutions
- Create higher impact communications and promotion
- Standardize and improve the user/researcher experience
- Increase efficiency and quality
- Help ensure sustainability through a community approach